Mr. Balfour has made a series of speeches this week
which, if delivered at any less busy political epoch, would one and all of them have deserved separate notice. Mr. Gladstone says that the Unionists have abandoned argument, and taken to intimidation, invention, and appeal to religious bigotry instead. If a series of speeches could be pro. duced more closely crammed than Mr. Balfour's with terse and illustrative argument from unquestionable and, in the main, unquestioned facts, we should be greatly surprised. Take his sPeech delivered in the Colisseum at Leeds yesterday week, and its argument against the form of Home-rule which Mr. Gladstone proposes, founded on the mode in which Grattan's Parliament "managed Ireland by intimidation," and was itself managed by England only by the free use of corruption ; or its final and convincing confutation of Mr. Gladstone's contention that the 'Plan of Campaign" was forced upon the Irish people by the refusal of the Govern- ment to accept Mr. Parnell's Bill in the autumn of 1886; or take his speech at*Manchester on Monday, with its conclusive refutation of Professor Munro's economical statistics pro- fessing to prove that Ireland has been falling off in prosperity during these last six years; or take his term and masterly discussion of the proposed Eight-Hours Bill at Manchester on Tuesday; or his extremely temperate and lucid discussion of the religious bigotry charged against the Government at Manchester on Wednesday,—and we undertake to say that speeches fuller of solid fact and irrefragable argument have not been delivered by any speaker during the last Parliament.
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